It’s a great boon to public-interest lawyers like my wife; after 120 months of public-interest work, whatever’s left of her debt vanishes. Assuming she stays in qualifying fields, that’ll be tens of thousands of dollars, perhaps over $100,000. The bill was based in part on the work and advocacy of Georgetown Law prof Philip Schrag, who explained the purpose and function of the Act in an article for Hofstra Law Review.

Looking back on it through a recessionary lens, there are some odd aspects to it. It’s all or nothing: you get total forgiveness after 10 years of work, nothing if you don’t make it that long. There’s no accounting for spousal income, as far as I can tell. It’s very straightforward and simply meant to get people to work in public service. Unlike income-based repayment—after 25 years of which debts are forgiven—there’s not really any economic rationale at all.

I don’t remember hearing much pushback in 2007, which makes me think that there may be political room for debt forgiveness, broadly speaking. Complete forgiveness is a pie in the sky idea, but I can envision extensions of the philosophy behind the College Cost Reduction and Access Act: for example, reducing payments further for younger or more recent grads, or expanding ten-year forgiveness to other fields. Given recent history and the convergence of We are the 99 Percent and rising student loan debt, I can see this being one of the issues to move from Occupy Wall Street to actual legislation.